Grammar is glamorous? For many people, that would be an impossible association of ideas, remembering a time when they were taught English grammar in school, trying to analyse complicated sentences into parts, and learning rules and terms whose purpose was never clear. Glamorous it wasn't. For others. the association would be pointless, for they were never taught any English grammar at all.

This was a great shame, as grammar, when taught properly, is indeed an exciting and stimulating subject. It's the study of the way we compose our sentences, of how we say what we mean and of the different effects we convey by varying the order of our words. In short, grammar shows us how we make sense. And the more we know about grammar, the more we understand how language works.

But this book isn't about grammatical constructions; it's about words. And when we explore the origins of the word grammar, we find some real surprises. Would you expect an encounter with magic and the supernatural? Just listen.

Grammar comes from a Latin word, grammatica, which in turn derives from gramma, meaning a written mark, or letter. It originally included the study of everything that was written - literature as well as language - and eventually this sense was extended to mean the knowledge that a person acquires through literacy. But people who could read and write were an elite. They included not only monks and scholars but also those who dealt in astrology and magic. This is where the supernatural comes in. In medieval Europe, the word grammar was often used to talk about the study of the occult. And when the word arrived in English, in the 14th century, it brought in those associations. A new word emerged: people would talk about gramarye, meaning 'occult learning', 'necromancy'. It's this magical sense that leads to glamour. In the 18th century in Scotland, people took up the word grammar, meaning 'an enchantment ' or 'a spell', but they changed the pronunciation. Devils and wizards were said to cast the glamour over the eyes of onlookers. From here it was a short step to the meaning of an alluring charm surrounding someone or something. And in the 20th century, we see the word arriving at its present-day sense of 'charm ' and 'attractiveness'.

In the 1930s, people talked about glamour boys - a phrase given popular appeal when it was used to describe the handsome young airmen of the wartime RAF. Eventually the adjective came to be used chiefly for women, especially after the movies popularised the phrase glamour girls, and the pin-up photograph became widespread. The word took an unexpected direction in the 1950s, when it began to be used as a euphemism for nude or topless modelling. If you were offered glamour photographs, you wouldn't expect to see much clothing. Girls, such as those gracing page 3 in The Sun newspaper, were described as glamour models, and the agencies and events promoting them were said to be on the glamour circuit. The term is still widely used in this way. The unexpected link between grammar and glamour illustrates a general point about the history of words. Often, a source word develops meanings that are so different from each other that we don't suspect they have a common origin. Who would ever guess that there's a common origin for salary, sausage, sauce and salad? And who would ever have predicted that grammar would one day give birth to such a flamboyant and publicity-seeking child as glamour? Grammar hasn't yet achieved such a vivid popular presence - but I live in hope.